Saturday, August 25, 2007

I Don't Get... really, I don't

So, I'm on Ravelry now. I haven't been anxiously waiting my turn to get in; until last weekend, I'd never even checked to see where I was on the list.

Now, I'm in. Do I feel like I've joined an exclusive club of some kind? Nope. Am I impressed with it? Not really.

I've joined two groups, neither of which has had any activity since I introduced myself. One has a total of 8 posts (in one month) and the other has 4 posts (also in one month). Hmm... quiet people or what?

A good number of the knitting books I own have been duly catalogued and are on display (I do like the bookshelves), but what's the purpose? Is it so that other people can see what books you own and ask you for patterns? Or offer to buy books from you? What?

Cataloguing one's stash could be a good idea, but seeing as I regularly fondle my stash, again, why have your stash on public display other than to prove to people you're totally addicted to yarn and we already know that anyway?

In all honesty, I'm rather ambivalent about Ravelry. A place for knitters to get together and compare what they have and what they've done... do we really need that? Like I said, I don't really get why everyone else is so excited about Ravelry.

Oh, I'd post about knitting and what I've done this week, but it seems I've been frogging more than knitting. My knitting time has been very limited this week and nothing has progressed. *sigh*

7 comments:

The aspect of Ravelry that appeals to me is being able to see what yarns other people have used for projects that I'm thinking of knitting. It can be helpful to see if others might have run into problems with a particular pattern , yarn, etc. Overall I understand your ambivalence . I feel a bit the same way

Also, if you were working on a project and ran out of yarn and couldn't find it anywhere there is a possibility that you could locate someone with that in their stash and find out if they would be willing to sell it or trade it to you.

I believe the idea of inventorying your stuff isn't really for others to look at. I know I don't browse others online bookshelf. I think it is for you to have online access of what books that you have. The needle inventory is definitely just for you as you can have your list of needles sent to your cell phone. This would be good if you were out shopping and ran across a sale on needles but couldn't remember which ones you had or didn't have.

Another thing is that while it might seem trivial to take pictures and inventory your yarn, I have found it quite pleasing to look at the yarns that people have taken pictures of.

A lot of us don't have local yarn stores. So the only way we can look at a particular yarn is online by those little swatches. So to be able to see a particular colorway as more then just a swatch of color is great. Even better, is to see how it is worked up in different projects. That is something you rarely get from yarn stores or even online vendors.

I don't think that ravelry's main intention was the forums. If you would like to visit and share with others in a forum setting, I set up Fiber Freaks about a year ago and we are a great group of women that talk about knitting and crochet.

I'm on Ravelry as well (since August 18 or something like that), and it is funny that once you're in you find yourself thinking..."this is it?" I do think the wait gets everyone expecting WAY more than it is. That being said, I am finding it to be like a kind of Knitting Wikipedia. I already had a spreadsheet for yarn and needles, and Ravelry takes it a step further. I like being able to look up patterns to see what yarn subs have been used successfully, where problems were found and especially photos of finished garments on real bodies, not just the model pics (where we all know that things are pinned and pinched to fit). I'm not a big forum or chat fan, so those aren't features I'll utilize much. I did join a couple of groups, but again I don't know how much I'll participate. Overall it's a great idea and like anything it will need time to grow and patience during the rough patches.

I just got my invite a few days ago and I haven't had much time to click around. Don't need to put my stash on line or my needles either. But I think it'll be interesting to see what everyone is working on and they yarns being used.

I find it's a good place to troll for patterns - by looking to see what projects people use for a given yarn, or by searching for a specfic type of pattern, or just from looking at the "newly entered patterns".

The queue function is also helpful as it allows me to keep track of what yarn I intend to use for a future project. I'm finding that I have been able to "assign" projects for some yarns that have been sitting in my stash for a while now.

Your mileage might be affected by the fact that you design alot of your own knits.

My favorite things about Ravelry are the search tools. I can search for a pattern and see if anyone else has made it, what yarn they used, if it looks good on real people, if the pattern is confusing etc. I also love to search the yarns in my stash to get ideas for future projects. Sometimes I just love the pure inspiration of all those projects and all those knitters coming together in one place. Love it!